Multiple Reports Suggest UFC Ditching ESPN for Netflix

Posted on: March 17, 2025, 12:32h. 

Last updated on: March 17, 2025, 12:49h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.
  • Technical problems prevented thousands of viewers from purchasing UFC 313 on ESPN+ earlier this month
  • The incident was the latest in a string of issues between UFC and ESPN
  • Reports say UFC CEO Dana White is looking for a new deal with Netflix following the end of the current ESPN contract

A week after a major technical outage prevented thousands of American customers from successfully paying to view UFC 313, a new report has UFC CEO Dana White eager to ditch ESPN+ for a deal with Netflix.

Due to a technical outage, UFC CEO Dana White felt it necessary to personally stream part of UFC 313 on his Instagram. (Image: X/@mmafighting)

According to Jake Aryeh and Erich Richter of the New York Post, the Netflix deal would begin next January after UFC’s contract with ESPN runs out.

Multiple sources say thousands found themselves unable to purchase UFC 313 — which saw Alex Pereira lose his light heavyweight title to Magomed Ankalaev at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena — from ESPN’s streaming service. According to Sports Illustrated, some who couldn’t watch the fight were charged anyway while others were charged twice.

“Oh yeah, it made it to me,” White said during the post-fight press conference. “I don’t know what happened with their platform tonight. There were a lot of pissed-off people.”

One of them was White himself, who personally streamed the beginning of the fight to 20K Instagram users via his personal, cage-side TV monitor.

And it’s not just UFC who wants out of this deal. According to Richter, ESPN was already disappointed with UFC’s PPV numbers before UFC 313.

The UFC gets [paid] 300,000 pay-per-view buys as a ‘buy-in’ from ESPN,” the reporter said on his Post YouTube podcast. “There’s no way that ESPN is getting 300,000 pay-per-view buys out of every pay-per-view, from what I was told. So, this has been a bad marriage in the last couple years for both parties.

“UFC is frustrated that the technology that ESPN [uses] is not up to speed yet, and ESPN is frustrated because they’re not getting the pay-per-view buys that they had expected.”

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The new PPV partnership would be a natural fit since Netflix currently holds the rights to events staged by WWE, which is owned by UFC’s parent company, Endeavor.

UFC licensed its broadcast rights to ESPN in a May 2018 deal worth a reported $1.5 billion. The contract — covering 30 events per year, 20 on ESPN+ and 10 on ESPN linear networks — originally locked UFC in for five years, but negotiations and extensions made it seven.

Whether Netflix would include complimentary access to UFC pay-per-views remains to be seen.

Neither the UFC nor Netflix would confirm the reports.